Tutorials Audio

Making a Record: The Whole Process, in Order

By Infinite Creation · Beginner · ~18 min

Overview

Making a record is usually taught as a set of separate skills, and the skills really are separate, but the order matters more than any one of them. Problems created while writing cannot be solved while mixing, and time spent perfecting a mix of an arrangement that is going to change is time thrown away. This page is the sequence, with what each stage decides and which guide covers it, so that you can find where you actually are rather than reaching for the stage you are most comfortable with.

You will need:

A digital audio workstation, and no strong opinion about which one
Headphones or speakers you have listened to enough to know
Something you want to make, since every stage below is easier on real material than on an exercise

Steps

Stage one, the material: theory and songwriting

Everything downstream is built on what the piece actually is. That means enough theory to know why some notes belong together and enough structural sense to know what each section of a song is doing. Neither requires reading music. Start with Music Theory for Producers Who Do Not Read Music, then Songwriting Structure.

Stage two, the harmony: chord progressions

A small number of progressions carry an implausible share of popular music, and each of them is doing a specific thing to a listener. Knowing which one you are using, and how to alter it without breaking the thing that made it work, is more useful than a long list you cannot apply. Covered in Chord Progressions That Work.

Stage three, the rhythm: drums and bass

These two decide how the record feels before anyone notices the harmony. Programmed drums sound stiff for reasons that are specific and fixable, and a bass part is written against the kick rather than against the chords. Drum Programming and Bass and Low End cover them, and they are best read together.

Stage three, alternate route: sampling

If the material is coming from existing recordings rather than being played, the technical work is chopping and fitting, and the question that decides whether the track can ever be released is clearance. Sampling Technique covers both, and the clearance half belongs at the start of a project rather than the end.

Stage four, the shape: arrangement

This is where most tracks are won or lost. Arrangement is the decision about what is playing at any moment, and almost all of the work is subtraction. A great many problems that present as mix problems are arrangement decisions that have not been made. Arranging a Track covers it.

Stage five, the balance: mixing

Only now is there something to mix. Mixing is deciding what a listener hears first and making sure nothing important is obscured, and it is far easier on an arrangement that is finished. The site already covers this in Mixing a Full Song, with the individual processes broken out across the sound and mixing guides.

Stage six, the finish: mastering

Mastering is the last set of decisions about tone and level, made on the finished stereo file, and it cannot rescue a mix. Loudness is not the competitive advantage it once was, because streaming services normalise playback. Mastering Basics covers what the published targets mean in practice.

Stage seven, the release: distribution and rights

Between a master and a listener sits an administrative process with its own vocabulary. Two separate rights exist in every song, they are collected by different organisations, and most money that goes uncollected goes uncollected because the composition side was never registered. Releasing Music Independently covers it.

Pro Tips

The most common mistake is working out of order: mixing an arrangement that will change, or mastering a mix that is not finished.
You do not have to be good at every stage. Knowing which stage a problem belongs to is most of the skill.
Nothing here is specific to a genre or a DAW. The tools differ and the sequence does not.
If a track is not working and you cannot say why, the answer is usually in stage four rather than stage five.

Knowledge Base

Going Deeper

Two questions decide how this sequence is used: whether it has to be followed in order, and where the boundary between arranging and mixing actually falls.

Whether the order is compulsory

It is not a procedure. It is a dependency graph. Stages can overlap and often should, because writing something while a drum pattern is playing produces different music from writing it in silence. What the order encodes is which decisions constrain which others.

The dependencies that genuinely bind are worth naming. Arrangement constrains mixing, because a mix cannot separate parts that occupy the same range. Mixing constrains mastering, because mastering works on the finished stereo file and cannot reach inside it. And the clearance question on a sample constrains everything, because a track that cannot be released is not a track with a mixing problem.

Where arranging ends and mixing begins

The line is blurry in practice and the test is simple: if the fix removes or moves a part, it is arrangement, and if it changes the balance or tone of parts that stay, it is mixing. Engineers carving deep holes with an equaliser to fit two sounds into one range are almost always doing arrangement work with the wrong tool.

This matters because the arrangement fix is usually free and the mix fix usually costs something. Muting one of two competing pads takes a second and loses nothing if the track survives it. Separating them with equalisation thins both, and the result is two weakened parts where there could have been one strong one.

FAQ

Q: Do I need to know all of this to release something?
A: No. People release music having thought about none of it. The sequence is useful when something is not working and you want to know where to look, and when you want the next record to be better than guessing.

Q: Which stage should I learn first?
A: The one where your work currently stops. If your tracks never get finished, it is usually arrangement. If they get finished and sound small, it is usually the mix. If they sound good and nobody hears them, it is the last stage.

Q: Does this apply to electronic music?
A: Yes, with different emphasis. Much electronic music holds one harmony for a long time and creates movement through timbre and rhythm, so stages three and four carry more weight and stage two carries less.

Q: Where does sound design fit?
A: Alongside stages three and four rather than after them. On a record where the sounds themselves are the material, choosing and building them is composition rather than decoration, and the synthesis guides on this site cover the mechanics.

Vocabulary

Arrangement The decision about which parts play at which moment, made after the material exists and before the mix. It is the stage where most tracks are won or lost, and the one most often skipped.

Mix The balance and tone of the individual parts against each other. It can only work with the parts it is given, which is why an unfinished arrangement makes mixing harder rather than the other way round.

Master The final stereo file, and the last set of decisions about its overall tone and level. It works on the finished file rather than the parts inside it, which is why it cannot repair a balance problem in the mix.

Release Everything that stands between a finished master and a listener: the distributor that delivers it, the metadata that travels with it, and the registration of two separate rights which are collected by different organisations and are easy to leave undone.